


Mirror, Lie

by telm_393



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Biting, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mind Games, Missing Scene, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Speech Disorders, Stuttering, Whump, pseudo-selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:28:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: After killing the kid in the house of mirrors, Pennywise turns its attention to Bill, and decides to have some fun playing dress-up.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Pennywise
Comments: 7
Kudos: 98





	Mirror, Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Note that the biting is dick-biting. :) Also there's some vomiting, here and there.
> 
> To my great surprise, pseudo-selfcest is not a canonical tag, so. Get on that, AO3.
> 
> Thanks to within_a_dream for betaing.

Blood crawls down the glass like rain on a window, and Bill doesn’t want to look. Bill doesn’t want to look at anything. Bill wants to die. He was willing, he really was.

(There’s so much blood for such a little kid.)

Bill notices for the first time that the glass he was trapped behind is gone. He has more space now, and even though there’s pieces of glass crunching under his shoes, he can’t see the hole where Pennywise’s head broke through. He can’t see anything but mirrors. 

He can’t see anything but himself, and that’s the last thing he wants to see. 

He needs to get out of here. 

He doubles over and throws up.

He gets a good view of his shoes as he gasps and spits, but it’s only when he’s done retching that he notices another, identical pair, though there’s no mirror in his line of sight.

His breath catches in his throat.

Bill’s not alone yet.

Because there’s nothing else he can do, he looks up. 

He expects Pennywise. He sees himself, but not a reflection. This time, he’s flesh and blood. 

Bill lets out a strangled sound and backs up. He should’ve run. 

For a moment, he can’t understand what’s happening, how a version of himself escaped the mirror, and then his—It’s—eyes flash yellow, and Bill understands. 

He’s getting played. 

Bill is shaking. He would much rather be looking at a clown than this facsimile of himself in a clean shirt and jeans, eyes sharp and lips curled up in a smile, a predator wearing his face. 

Pennywise takes a step towards him. Bill takes another step back. His heel hits a puddle of blood, and he slips and falls flat on his back, reeling. He only blinks once before Pennywise is on top of him. Its version of Bill’s body moves more fluidly than Bill ever has.

Pennywise’s deranged grin grows and grows until Bill’s sure the smile is going to split its face open. Bill would welcome that. Another sign that this isn’t him, even though he can see the charade if he just tries. 

Bill can still feel himself start to forget, right up until Pennywise’s eyes flash yellow again and Bill actually feels relieved. 

Bill opens his mouth to say something, because the only defenses his limp body seems to have left are his words, though he knows that the only things he has to say are useless. It still makes his chest twist with humiliation when nothing comes out except, “St-st-sssss-”

Pennywise speaks in Bill’s voice with no hesitation, slow and measured. No mumbling, no need to just spit it out. “What’s wrong, Billy? Sssssnake got your tongue?” 

Pennywise’s smile may not split Bill’s faked face open, but it is wider than Bill thinks he’s ever smiled. Even in his wedding pictures he doesn’t think his smile was that wide, and he was smiling bigger than usual, because of the cameras. The whole thing is uncanny in a way that makes Bill want to throw up again. 

(He loves the uncanny in his work. What’s happening to him right now would be a great premise. He should keep it in mind. He’s sure he’ll be keeping it in mind.)

Bill’s arm flails out as he scrabbles at the smooth floor, trying to get away, but his fingers just slip in the blood, and he gags. Gags on bile, gags on the words he wants to say, and when he moves his head to the side to try not to choke on the shallow remnants of vomit, coughing and spitting, he sees himself and then himself again.

Bill Denbrough and Bill Denbrough’s reflection and Bill Denbrough’s cheap illusion and the reflection of that too, and Bill can tell which one is real not because he knows his own body but because the real Bill is crying silent tears and the fake one won’t stop smiling. The fake one is straddling the real Bill’s waist and holding the real Bill’s shoulders down and Bill can’t stand to look at all the versions of himself anymore, so he looks up and away and if he aspirates he’ll probably deserve it. 

Looking up is, in the end, not much better. There he is—there It is—still with that smile plastered on its face. There are Bill’s eyes, still flashing yellow sometimes, Bill’s teeth, straighter and sharper than he thinks they really are, gleeful malice in every inch of its expression—

Bill’s eyes wander to the hair instead. All auburn, no gray. It missed the gray. Bill’s always liked the gray. Audra does too. It’s distinguished. Without it, Bill looks younger. 

( _There’s no way to explain this one to Audra, is there?_ Bill thinks, and he almost wants to laugh.) 

Bill should say something. Even with the stutter, he always found something to say, back when there were people willing to listen. 

He knows that Pennywise won’t listen no matter what, but he still begs himself: _please let me talk._ He should say something, he feels the need to speak now (or forever hold his peace?) with a desperation that makes his whole body burn. He’s William Denbrough and words have been his only real friends for so long, and he has to try. Maybe he can still save this, he thinks, that stupid hope that’s gotten him through so much and into so much trouble in turns. 

“If-f I l-l-le-et y-y-you d-d-d—” Bill starts, trying for an authoritative voice, but his vocal cords get stuck, the sounds tangle in his throat and he can’t get anything out, not a word of this pointless bargain, this nonsense thing he’s trying to say:

_If I let you do this, will you leave everyone alone? Will you leave my friends alone? Will you stop killing kids? What if I..._

“L-l-le-t y-you kuh-k—” and the words escape him again and there’s just Bill, jerking and grappling to make any sound at all.

“Oh, Billy,” It says, his own voice dripping with condescension. “It’s so cute that you’re giving it a shot. Good for you.”

In response, Bill, for a humiliated moment, gives up.

(Before he lost the stutter, everyone would fill in his words for him, and with a placid smile and a mouthed, insincere _thanks_ , he would let them. In those moments, he wished for, but didn’t quite remember, people who thought that he had important things to say no matter how he said them.)

Pennywise leans closer. His breath is hot on Bill’s face, and his lips, It’s lips, are nearly brushing Bill’s, and he knows what’s about to happen. 

_I’d let you kill me,_ Bill wants to say. _Wait, wait. I’d let you keep me. You can do anything, just let my friends live, just let the kids live, let me save someone for once._

But Bill’s not that special. He would never be enough for It.

It’s going to do what It wants to him, Bill knows that as the solid illusion of his lips meet his own, as Pennywise’s hands unbutton and unzip its fly and it moves back for a moment, just long enough for Bill to regain enough energy to scramble up and away, but only to a seated position. He’s slumped against a mirror, across from another one and another one and another one, all of the versions of himself making him dizzy, and he tries to speak one more time. 

He doesn’t know what he’s going to say and he doesn’t know why he’s trying, but It’s gotten to its feet in front of him and Bill knows exactly what’s going to happen now. Fear’s made his brain blank out, and the thing is…

The thing is: after Bill got rid of the stutter--enough that he was usually the only person who noticed he even had one--he started to tend toward nervous babble. So he opens his mouth, and then he regrets it.

He’s speechless now, words stifled by It forcing its way into his mouth, and at the same time he won’t shut up. 

_It_ won’t shut up, going on and on exactly like Bill can’t, like he knows he wouldn't be able to even if his mouth weren't occupied.

“You’re good at this. You know that, Billy? It’s _so_ impressive, since you’re not good for much else, are you? You know that too, don’t you? We’re not much good for anything else. We ruined ourself, didn’t we? When we were just thirteen years old. So _sad.”_

 _That doesn’t make sense,_ Bill thinks, dazed. _We were only thirteen years old. I was only thirteen years old. Just a kid. We were all so young._

“And now we’ve lost the kid,” Pennywise says, letting out a grunt of pleasure that Bill’s sure he’s just putting on, and Bill feels like he's been here for ages, and the thought reminds Bill that he has shit to do. Through the muted terror--except Bill’s not sure if he’s really afraid anymore, all the raw things in him starting to fade away, scarring over as the minutes pass--there’s a spark of a different kind of panic. 

What if his friends go to Neibolt house without him? What if they think he left them behind? What if they think he’s dead? Bill shouldn’t have come here alone. Bev told him not to. He should’ve listened to her, should’ve listened to anyone, but he didn’t and now here he is. Actually, maybe it’s better that he didn’t, a manic, bitterly optimistic little part of him says. He didn’t listen, so now this isn’t happening to any of his friends. _You’re welcome, guys. Here’s to the Losers Club._

Everything feels wrong and fuzzy, and it's a sick kind of funny, but Bill’s not laughing, he’s choking. He didn’t think he was this big, and he suspects that he isn’t, but he doesn’t have much time for an internal dick-measuring contest. 

_You have to get this over with,_ his analytical brain tells him, the same brain that has nightmares and, even as it reels and the body it’s in struggles to breathe, thinks, _That would be a good detail for the book._ (There’s always a book.) 

So Bill bites down.

In one of Audra’s early movies, there was a scene that wasn’t really like this but was also a lot like this, and Audra bit. Bill’s never liked that scene, but now he does his best to replicate it. It’s more difficult than he thought it would be—he doesn’t know if it’d be easier in real life to get a grip, to break skin; it’s not something he’s tested—but he manages it. He bites so hard he tastes blood.

He would wince internally about the whole thing, but he’s too far gone, his hands in his hair, gripping too tight (It’s hands in his hair, _this isn’t you, Bill_ ) and saliva dripping down his chin. Bill wants to die, in a vague, matter-of-fact way, but more than that he needs to get out of this place. 

There’s blood in his mouth. He's biting as hard as he can, locking his jaw pitbull-style, and he knows that if this were actually him or anyone else he’d be crazy with pain right now, but this isn’t really him or human at all, and Bill feels disgust lurch in his stomach when all he does is groan with pleasure. 

“You _are_ good at this,” Bill says, voice velvety in a way Bill can only ever manage alone when he’s reading dialogue out loud. “You know just what I like.”

He keeps thrusting. Bill’s teeth scrape away from the skin when he gags again, tears running down his face because it hurts, and there’s blood in his mouth and his saliva is just making it run faster, and Bill is swallowing even before It comes. When It does come, the taste of copper and salt rushes over Bill's tongue and down his throat, and Bill feels limp, outside of himself and with his back to the whole sorry scene because he shut his eyes at some point. They’re still shut when the other body finally pulls away. Bill can almost breathe again, but only in the most literal sense, gasping for air. He struggles to his knees, leans over to brace himself with his hands on the ground, and throws up for the millionth time. 

There’s blood in his mouth and on his face and the floor, and not enough of it is his. He lifts one hand up to wipe blindly at his face and then it’s just him and his heaving breaths until he finally opens his eyes.

Heart pounding in his throat, he looks up. 

The only thing he sees is his own reflection. 

There’s gray in his hair. 

Bill blinks slowly. He’s still alone, still looking at himself, and as he stares at his drained face and wide, glassy eyes, he consciously decides that what just happened isn’t something he can think about. He feels so light-headed, so far away, that for a moment just not thinking about what happened feels doable. He stands up. No one’s come into the funhouse in all this time, he realizes, and it makes him consider that it hasn’t been so long after all. That’s a good thing, he tells himself. He needs time. What they all need is time. 

There’s blood on him, and as he makes his way out of the funhouse, as his body replaces the numbness with the rage and grief and eviscerating sadness of before, he hopes no one notices. 

It’s Derry. No one does.

Bill wipes at his face and runs his tongue over his teeth, and as the blood smears away and goes down his throat he forgets about everything but what matters.

The kid is dead, and it’s Bill’s fault, it’s all Bill’s fault, but he’s going to fix everything. He’s going to finish this once and for all, he tells Mike over the phone, the last however-many minutes disappearing into the back of his mind like fog. Determination pounds at his skull like a headache, and all his desperate anger just grows and grows until there’s not much else left. There's not much of Bill left, but there's enough to kill It.

Bill is going to save everyone. He’s going to protect the people he loves. 

Bill gets on Silver and starts pedaling. He is going to make everything that just happened between the kid’s death and his ride to Neibolt irrelevant. 

Bill’s going to make It go away, and what just happened is nothing but another reason to fight, and not even close to the main one.


End file.
